4522. A bonehead entry into a dying class

[in4aride]

Well, here it is. The 4522 car. While built around the rules for Ultra 4, the car will see more local desert races with BOR and VORRA than ultra4 stuff. But I built to that spec in case I decided on hammers.
There's a lot of terrible tech in here. This is my first raw material to completion build. I've always just added parts to a production vehicle. I wanted to build this for a few reasons - 1: I wanted to learn the processes I needed for layout, chassis setup, weld order, and general fab. 2: been gathering pieces for my wife's truck that will shame this one, and wanted to rough draft some ideas on mine first. 3: I wanted to have zero excuses about limited by factory this, can't make this work with that, etc. If this works I want it to be my fault. If it doesn't I also want it to be my fault.
As with anything it's a compromise on what you want vs what you get. Performance here at the cost of performance there.
I've always been a crawler. 4low, deep gears, underpowered, and usually full body. I love ifs stuff, newer toyotas especially because I feel there's a lot of room to develop there. So I set out to build a car more geared toward go fast, but keep the rock side. So for 4500, that's live axle, lower belly, 14" shocks, and mechanical steering.
Here's where it started. My small garage being mostly empty and clean (I'm a mess, total scatter brain).


And here's the most recent shot of progress as I try and get the body all mounted up.



I'll drag this through the progress as I can.
No cad, no real plan other than some key ideas I had in my head, and some tape and parts.

 

[in4aride]

First thing first was drivetrain. Found a great donor candidate with about 120k and a bad lifter on #6. We knew we were doing can, lifters, springs, did delete, and general refresh anyway, so this wasn't a big deal. Guy sold me the "non runner" for $1600. Swapped the battery and drove it on the trailer.
These L76 are a great option for builds as the LS2 bottom end leads itself to some good power. Kept the truck intake and aluminum heads, but I'll get into more of that later.
Basically cut the front of the truck apart to pull the drivetrain complete. Added some scrap into the bed before taking to metal yard where I got 500+ back. 1100 into a drivetrain isn't bad.

 

[in4aride]

At this point I've been collecting some parts and pieces and getting planned work down. Wheels and tires, set of 05+, some brake pieces, and the atlas.
I plan on keeping the 6l80 with the stupid low first gear so I can run a slightly shallower tcase and axle ratio. So far that's panned out well. I did weld on histeer for now and even added another layer up top to keep things as high and controlled as possible.
I'd also got my shocks in from a couple of my buddies. Shane over at Fox. Shocks got me set up with some old new stock. The bypasses were set up with the new coil over internals with the poppets and everything. Then they went over to Ian at wheel every weekend to throw a base tune into them off of anticipated weights and balances and up travel etc. Haven't need to do more shock tuning sense but I feel like it is coming as we get more used to the car. I also got my aluminum lower links in, unfortunately the tooling on them was pretty rough but it didn't matter. We were going to destroy him on the car anyway. The company ended up sending some replacements and so far have been super happy with the abuse. They have taken. Two and a quarter aluminum links are super bling for me.

 

[in4aride]

Then it was time to finally start putting the chassity together. My basic goal here was to shoot for a wheelbase. I wanted, the motor sucked back as far as possible without keeping the drive shafts too short or violating the rules of 4500. Then I wanted to keep the cab as small as reasonable but still have enough room. I roughed in some measurements based off of my old TJ chassis and just widened it slightly. Otherwise it's roughly the same interior space as the TJ with the cage, with the exception of the motor sitting where the transmission used to be. A lot of tack and remove to fully weld all the tubes underneath coped tubes and realigning things. Throughout the weld process, I was able to keep everything within 1/10 of a degree of parallel. So for a garage floor build and hand notching I don't feel too terrible about it. In hindsight, I should have built the cab a little bit larger, it is very snug in there currently. But it's growing on me.

 

[in4aride]

Then it was time for a lot of brackets and tabs. Some of these were tabs I had already designed to use with some links I had done on tacomas. Others were some parts from TMR customs. And some others were some brackets that I really liked from jehc who had helped us with the center mount setup for my wife's truck. Lots of tie-in stuff and trying to get mounts to touch on more than one piece so that everything is tied together because I am very hard on things. Also through in a couple photos of some parts pieces and progress for my wife's truck. Was awesome to be able to get my kiddo out in the shop to give me a hand marking things as well.

 

[in4aride]

The next plan was to start sorting out axle location and shock mounts. I decided to lay out the axle and use the mounts on the axle to lay out where the shocks would land on the chassis and build the rear chassis around Those mounts. Seems kind of backwards but for free handing it, I felt like this was the best route for me to go. I wanted a setup with as flat of links as possible, minimal pinion change, minimal drive shaft plunge, and ultimately being able to use the same link as a spare anywhere. My lowers have the heims pretty much sucked all the way in and the uppers have the hiems about halfway through the threads. This let's me carry one spare and since all the joints are right hand inch and a quarter, I shouldn't have to worry about that as much either. I added some bracing on the chassis side Shock mount just in case we blow through the bump stops and just because I love tying everything together.

 

[in4aride]

After the axle is in place I wanted to get the spare mounted. I was torn between single spare or dual spare. And I was also torn between horizontal Mount and vertical mount. Ultimately, I ended up deciding on a single horizontal Mount with the Jack and tools and other spares on top. At this point I know that is going to change. I have been dragging the rear bumper around the spare quite a bit and I want the additional weight of the second spare on the back for shock tuning. So I'm going to cut a bunch of the back and go to two verticals with the Jack and some tools in between them. Ultimately the way I plan on doing it should put the center of gravity for that in the same spot as it currently is but gain more clearance as well as about 150/200 lb of weight on the back which is just about exactly what I want. While I do like it being down low and pushed far back like this for the desert, ultimately the car needs the rear bias because that front axle is a house worth of weight, and in big climbs. I need the clearance. But that's the beauty of testing it out and seeing what actually works the way we thought it would.

 

[in4aride]

I started moving forward. Laying tape to sort tube placement. Mounting the fuel cell, radiator and laying the console tubes. How I set the tubes in the cab has been my biggest regret and will be reworked soon. Just so much lost space and no reasonable way to panel it or set seats and harnesses. Huge regret.
Radiator is an aluminum 3 core "stock" radiator running stock fans off the PCM. Cell is a 25 gallon circle track cell. I moved the hard pickup to lube from the pass rear corner to the center of the cell floor, put a hydromat to it, and foamed the rest. I had great luck with foam before only ever running ethanol free. We will see how 91 treats it.

 

[in4aride]

On to the front. The front was going to be very busy and very tight. While I knew moving the motor back would give me great room in front of it, it meant. Ext to it in the foot well would be crazy tight. Mix in dual shocks, a trussed boat anchor Dana 60, mechanical steering, panhard, etc and it was going to be a packaging nightmare. Plus sinking the body down on to the tube work and getting the tires to fit the body and not be in the headlights, or have a craY tall front clip. It's the opposite of the rear.

 

[in4aride]

A few notes at this point.
1- looking back I wish I had added a few more degrees angle back in the front shocks. They are almost vertical in the current setup, some more slope would have been nice, although much harder to package.
2- The steering wheel needs to go up a couple inches. It is roughly how I sit and fill the 3rd gen Tacoma cabin, but a touch higher wheel would be nice.
3- a better brake pedal mounting height would have made life easier as well. Both pedals actually. I may go to a shorter pedal length for brake and am sort of stuff as far as gen 4 electric pedal setups. But I think a heel pad will make that better.

 

[in4aride]

Having raced the stock class jeep, and wheeled a bunch of jeeps with tons and 40's using this box, I went right back to the psc big bore box for this setup. Already set for hydro, 4 mounting bolts, bigger bearings and piston. Seems like a win win.
However.
Now that we've been out in the car. It's the wrong box. It's 3 turn lock to lock and it's just too slow at speed. It needs a 2 turn max. I tried using a quickener like we use in circle track, but it just cavitated the pump and make the box terrible to drive. I reached out to power steering solutions and psc for options. Psc offered a jeep speed box. Be much faster like I need for the speed but I lose a little power in the tight stuff. There really isn't crawling in this car so losing that is ok. The downside now is despite saying it'll ship the following Tuesday, were now a month in and no shipment. The frustration is real, but may reach back out to power steering solutions and see if fitting one of their boxes might be the better move, or just the move that gets me a box.

 

[turbomonty]

looks real nice

 

[in4aride]

On the front, I went with an offset joint on the axle side of the drag link to prevent interference. I wedged all of the steering super tight to each other. The coilover has less than 3/8 of an inch between it and the panhard hardware. The panhard has less than a quarter inch of diff clearance at full bump and the tie rod is right up against the panhard mount at full bump and steering. And then the drag link actually runs in front of the tie Rod at full bump. It's a lot of freaking packaging. And then ran the bypass as a connector between two of the front structure tubes, and put the coil over off of its own Mount off the front. I still need to tie these two together with a brace, but they are holding up fine for now. Ignore the bent temporary panhard bar that is in there, it was just mockup.
You can also see the ridiculous struggle bus of trying to clearance the exhaust and the front drive shaft. And how tight the passenger side upper link mount is to the exhaust as well. It is a wild amount of packaging.

 

[in4aride]

Next step involved a lot of learning for me. I am not a motor person by any means. I am generally just a monkey that glues things together with some bubble gum. So we tore into this motor just to replace things we knew were problematic and wanted to change, only to create some others and require some other changing. So the initial thought was DOD delete, cam from Brian tooley, new lifters and pushrods, suggested dual valve springs for the LS3 heads, new front cover, and then just overall inspect everything. Were going to just do new head bolts but stripped the block on the last bolt in the torque sequence. Or the second to last bolt. So that required getting the tick performance jig drilling everything out to half inch and doing studs. I needed more clearance next to the power steering so I did a power steering and alternator and idler pulley relocate bracket from ICT. And also converted the coolant later to -20 an line, but that created an interference between the straight forward port and the belt. Belt. So I had to make a small bracket to angle the tensioner and then shave the same quarter inch off the back of the tensioner to keep things in line. We also went to the PSI harness to use the factory ECM. The goal was to use HP tuners to get everything set up, and a buddy of mine up the road had a HP tuners dongle to let me use which would save a chunk of cash not having to buy a new one. Unfortunately, this decision would come back to bite me down the road.
Other new items include all new sensors, new power steering pump and reservoir and pulley, new crank pulley, new oil pump, new oil pickup and new steam port setup. All new gaskets and seals and fancy parts and pieces. We kept stock injectors and fuel rail and throttle body due to the drive-by wire setup.

 

[in4aride]

This is about the time where I started making really poor decisions. It was right after Christmas and I was still convinced I was going to finish this car and go to hammers. We were getting the car to fire up but we weren't getting a crank signal. Reading. RPM was purely coming off of the cam sensor. All the sensors and gauges read perfectly fine before we pulled the drivetrain and swapped everything around. So we weren't sure where to chase. We started doing continuity testing and checking pin outs on the PCM and just having a bunch of issues with the motor running correctly.
Then we were also starting to work on templates and panels for laser so my brother could cat and cut the parts for me. This actually went pretty well, except for the dog house around the motor. That ended up getting way more complicated than it need to and really is the driving force behind redoing that hole in cab setup.
I also had to build some handmade mounts for the throttle pedal and brake pedal assembly. Went with a 16 to 1 dual master wheel wood setup and then just the factory truck electronic throttle assembly. It's a pretty tight fit in there, but it does lend itself to work pretty well all things considered. I do want to make a heel stand which should make the throttle pedal inserts substantially better. At this point. We're also starting to lay out lights and running electrical line and building the harness for the switch panel controller and all of the accessories.

 

[in4aride]

Next step involved a lot of learning for me. I am not a motor person by any means. I am generally just a monkey that glues things together with some bubble gum. So we tore into this motor just to replace things we knew were problematic and wanted to change, only to create some others and require some other changing. So the initial thought was DOD delete, cam from Brian tooley, new lifters and pushrods, suggested dual valve springs for the LS3 heads, new front cover, and then just overall inspect everything. Were going to just do new head bolts but stripped the block on the last bolt in the torque sequence. Or the second to last bolt. So that required getting the tick performance jig drilling everything out to half inch and doing studs. I needed more clearance next to the power steering so I did a power steering and alternator and idler pulley relocate bracket from ICT. And also converted the coolant later to -20 an line, but that created an interference between the straight forward port and the belt. Belt. So I had to make a small bracket to angle the tensioner and then shave the same quarter inch off the back of the tensioner to keep things in line. We also went to the PSI harness to use the factory ECM. The goal was to use HP tuners to get everything set up, and a buddy of mine up the road had a HP tuners dongle to let me use which would save a chunk of cash not having to buy a new one. Unfortunately, this decision would come back to bite me down the road.
Other new items include all new sensors, new power steering pump and reservoir and pulley, new crank pulley, new oil pump, new oil pickup and new steam port setup. All new gaskets and seals and fancy parts and pieces. We kept stock injectors and fuel rail and throttle body due to the drive-by wire setup.

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Side note to this. If you're doing LS studs. The tick jig really is awesome and makes it pretty brainless to do. Definitely recommend it. If you're local to me and need one just holler.

 

[in4aride]

Little detail on the back panel. I pre-cut slots in it for where I knew the harnesses were going to come through with the shoulder. Also dealing with brake line kits that had different sized banjos and fittings making me absolutely crazy. For some stupid reason, I decided to convert the whole brake system to -3an, so I had to order a special flare tool to convert everything to 37° flare. Flare. I recently picked up some dry disconnects that I'm going to put on the front and rear line. So if I pull the axles or have a break or something like that I can do the quick disconnect and not lose all of my fluid everywhere. Went and saw my buddies electric swapped Tacoma. Kept the manual transmission and it's a cool little town runner. The motor is surprisingly noise but it's cool that it still keeps the manual trans and four-wheel drive if he wants it. Started getting the drive shafts put together and routing the exhaust which made the chassis and drivetrain clearances a joke. 3-in exhaust per side. Definitely takes up some real estate. I went to pull the car out of the garage to run it around the house before loading out on the trailer and my brand new waldboro fuel pump died. Typical Koh shenanigans

 

[in4aride]

Koh was, in typical unprepared fashion, a shitshow. Car wasn't ready. We were thrashing to get things checked off. Lots of make it pass tech choices that all are getting redone.
To kick it off the fuel pump died, and that was my brand new one I just put on. So I paid a crap ton to overnight some to Vegas so that we could pick it up the next day. And right about 11:00 on Saturday. They let me know that they were kicking back by delivery to the following Wednesday. So we were on a crazy scramble to try to find a shop open on a Saturday that also had an external pump. Huge shout out to fig speed down there in Southern Las Vegas. Not only did they have that but they had absolutely everything, so definitely be going back to those guys for more parts in the future. Absolutely saved us being able to do anything.
Spent time with the tuner. Lots of issues. Stupid problems that would t resolve. As you may have read earlier, I was borrowing a hptuners interface. Well it was corrupt and roached the PCM. Ended up roaching the replacement PCM too, but that one was recoverable.
Tried doing some shock tuning while there. Plowed a rock at about 70 due to aforementioned slow steering box. Killed two weeks and one tire. We ultimately ended up as very expensive spectators for our friend Dani who was the yukon rookie driver. Lots of work. Lots of highs. Lots of lows.
A big lesson in how expensive hubris can be.
Upside is we got to drive the car. Even toss it in some whoops. Crew worked great together. No major mechanical failures other than PCM. Plus us having the genny and big welder out there helped keep the rusty nail boys going. Which felt fair since they welcomed us into camp and were cooking some great food. Awesome group of guys if you ever get the chance.

Also tossed in a few pics to show the tight tolerances on the front end.

 

[in4aride]

After hammers it was right into the changes we needed. (Like the helper spring for the rear of the X. ) New PCM from PSI to match the harness. New hptuners interface. -20 line and fittings to convert the cooling system. Work, driving this stupid thing full of engineers that didn't even need to be here.
Blew out the two wheels and a tire, so snagged a sweet marketplace deal on some Mickey's. 5 for $700. I'll take it.
Building an lines with steel braided is a PITA. So hard to keep from pushing out the insert.
Also was recommended these adapters to convert outputs to -20. Worked really well. Install was great. And no leaks from any of them yet. Auto plumb adapters. Some guys on the lakebed told me about them and it's been a great upgrade.
Also picked up a quickener from howe. Thought it might help the steering box delay. It did not. Despite how useful they are in circle track, it was terrible in this thing. So immediately yanked it out. The slow steering was safer than with the quickener.
(Side note my new psc box showed up today. Can't wait to install and try it. )

 

[Giant Geoff]

Cool build! Thanks for sharing.